Read Someone Else's War: A Novel of Russia and America Page 41
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General Trimenko was waiting for him in the dining room where Olivia’s scent lingered like an echo. “Wine or vodka, Dmitri Borisovich?”
“It had better be vodka, Anatoly Petrovich.” He needed to stop his mind.
Trimenko poured for him. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I do. It’s the consequences that I don’t know about.”
“I liked your first wife. I did not think a Jewish surgeon was the best possible choice of a wife, but I liked her a great deal. She is an astonishing surgeon and any soldier who does not respect that is beyond stupid. Your Doctor Tolchinskaya—even I am a little in love.”
“The same may be said for at least half my brigade.”
“How does she deal with it?”
“Ignores it and what man who is a man wants to make a fool of himself in those eyes?”
“As we get older, the big brain is more likely to overrule the little brain. However when the two brains talk to each other and agree, it’s a problem of at least an order of magnitude greater than if the little brain alone is interested.” Trimenko laughed softly. “I can order you not to sleep with her, but that isn’t the issue. I certainly won’t order you to sleep with her. You would disobey both orders.”
“Correct.”
“But if I thought ordering you not to love her would do the least good, I’d order you not to.”
“Also correct.”
“Dmitri Borisovich, you agree too easily.”
“Also correct.”
“You have not have known her for very long.”
“My sister had warned me of her quality and so I was so determined to avoid any entanglement that I even permitted myself to forget that a woman was coming. When she reported in, I warned her that if she betrayed my soldiers, I would deal with her as a soldier dealing with an enemy soldier. She looked right back at me and told me that I was not only fair, I was generous. Sadly, like my father, and in their different ways, because of my mother and my sister and my ex-wife, I know what the real thing is and I’m too old to even be able to want less.”
Trimenko found himself subsumed by yearning, then put it aside. “There are a great many things I could say about this woman in an attempt to dissuade you, Dmitri Borisovich. Brilliant, impossible, dangerous, you could find someone far more suitable for a rising officer who would be far less trouble for you. She may cost you an enormous amount.”
“All true.”
“If I were you, I would feel as you do. Just do not go too far with her too quickly, because you may some day have to choose.”
“Alas, any talk of choosing is a bit precipitous because I have not as yet even given her reason to slap me.”
Trimenko looked at him. “I do not know whether to be proud of you for upholding the honor of the Airborne or disappointed in you for letting down our reputation.”
Suslov smiled wryly. “Sir, I don’t think we want to know her opinion, whatever it may be, on that subject.”
“Let us drink to our good doctor.” They downed their vodka. “I will tell you another true thing, Dmitri Borisovich. You will never again meet anyone remotely like her.”
“Isn’t that one reason why we do what we do, starting with jumping out of perfectly good airplanes? To be the kind of people that no one will ever meet again?”
“You do indeed do the Airborne proud.” Trimenko paused. “Because of what we already owe this woman, we will not hold her against you.” Suslov said nothing, but in the hard and yet also very loving look the younger man gave him, Trimenko could see the depth of what Suslov had already offered Olivia. Very likely, he’d offered it without the woman’s conscious understanding, certainly without her overt acceptance. Perhaps she’d done the same with him.
“So, Dmitri Borisovich…in this matter, I have no orders to give you. But do please be aware of your commander’s intent.”
“I am always, Comrade General, aware of my commander’s intent.”